Sony Wants to Push Nintendo Out of the Console Business

Gaming Illustrated - Without question, Nintendo is one of the most successful gaming companies ever. With the next generation of gaming right around the corner, Nintendo has taken the first leap with its upcoming console, the Wii U. However, is this Nintendo’s attempt at the next generation or is it an attempt to catch up with Sony and Microsoft before the REAL next-gen gaming experience becomes available? While there is much talk about the Wii not matching up in comparison to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, Nintendo’s Wii was the only one of the three consoles that saw an early profit; Microsoft and Sony haven’t seen console profits until recently. Even with the Wii’s success, mostly due to its family orientation and Nintendo loyalists, Nintendo felt it was time to release a new console, not only earlier than its two competitors, but also at a price that they acknowledge is lower than the cost of development.

@wishing you're wrong,the ds1 was based of playstation analog joystick announces in japan 1995,most don't realize that the ds1 rumble differed from nintendo controller in that, it was built in to the controllers an the rumble functions was like a two stage rumble for Sony and the difference in time was like 6-8 mounths from from nintedos controller and ds1.

Yeah Sony number one and whatever....watch them release their console at the end AGAIN! And act like it wasn't their fault....they already said it would be a disaster if they were the last ones again with their ps4 PS: and Sony fanboys act like they don't care about the SKYRIM dlc lololololololik

To say Sony could have created a brand as huge as Mario, but just chose to not bother making those billions because of a "games aren't just for kids" CREED is insane.

Sony knew Nintendo had the family market tied up. They aimed for an older audience because it was easier to compete in that space.

Creating a brand with massive global appeal like Mario is hard, even with a ton of cash to spend. There is no magic bullet to accomplish such a feat, or else every company out there would be doing it. Imagining that "Sony could do it if they felt like it" is idealistic to say the least.

So yeah, Sony copying Nintendo means that they want to derail it... How is this interesting? Back in the 90's Sony copied the rumble and analog sticks too so what is the difference now? Has anything changed?

Sony did not copy analog control from Nintendo in no way shape or form. ps1 was the first console with dual analog, ps2 the first console with pressure sensitive buttons,PSP first handheld with analog, psvita first handheld to dual analog

Do your research n64 controller is all digital even the stick.

This article is full of crap Sega was it own demise releasing all those console's and addons Sega CD ,32x, game gear, saturn , Dreamcast even lacked a right analog lol. too many flops will kill a company you know Sega lost the trust and loyalty of gamers and consumers alike this was their demise

Its them who commissioned Sony to make the Nintendo Play Station CD-ROM System in the first place. So it's natural Nintendo licensed everything SNES to make the Play Station - logic.

You should thank Nintendo for helping create the Sony PlayStation, bub.

Sony and Nintendo are part of a struggling bunch of Japanese company's threatened by American giants like Microsoft, Apple & Google. They are the ones who "Wants to Push Nintendo & Sony Out of the Console Business" specially Microsoft.

Remember "The PS2 was outselling PCs" scenario back in early 2000 M$ did not take that lightly and was green with jealousy & envy hence a green colored console the Xbox.

I say don't let the Americans kill the Japanese companies. Buy Japanese products.

Analog sticks have been around for years BEFORE the Nintendo 64. The Neo Geo CD and Vectrex, are a few of them.

The PS1's Dual Analog Controller was released in 1997 with BUILT-IN rumble, before the DualShock which had two stage dual rumble motors. Nintendo released the rumble pack add-on the same month Sony released the PS1's Dual Analog Controller.

Sony reminds me of that turd that just was not quite right and maybe a little to yellow or red. Flush flush its that easy to say no more to sony. ....come to think about it , it could be the diffrent lifestyles that people eat up...any one hungry for a nintendo value meal or a xbox shake that will have your toilet green for weeks.

I think we can all agree competition is good for business and for us gamers. Sony came into this gen very arrogant and full of them self but learned that wii and xbox360 are giving consumers better bang for their buck. I spent 600 on ps3 at launch and I play to buy os4 at launch even if it's 500-600 just because Sony has a history and they know how to make quality games. But I would be stupid to say they have done it perfectly or smartly

Ps4 doesn't need to be ver powerful just make it where ts moving the tech forward and at a reasonable price for the consumers

Much much much much yeh 4 much easier development, this attitude of we are Sony and we make things harder has to change, make things extremely easy to develop for ps4 sp every publisher will be gladly on board

Sony will not be selling ps4 at a loss so they will try their best to cut even or make a little starting at launch,

Games,games,games and more games how about launching with killzone 4,uncharted 4,GT6 a new ratchet game. Ps3 early on was rough had so few quality games and that has to change.

People hate on VIta and say it has no games yet it launched with 25 games but thing is all those games came out than people forgot them so maybe space them out. Each game should get its fair time advertisement wise and consumers attention wise.

And stop shooting yourself in the foot like with Vita memory cards which are way over priced, to my earlier points make things easier for consumers and in the long run easier for Sony and publishers which are support the system or systems.

Let's get be thing out of the way this market is big enough to handle 3 main home consoles and more competition means better products for us.

I am very excited for wiiu but I am not buying it at launch but will be gettingit soon. The only concern I have for wiiu has more to do with Nintendo's history with 3rd arty publishers. They need to prove to us core gamers plus the publishers that they mean business and will be treating 3rd party games better.

Xbox720 or whatever it's gonna be called I am not intersted as of now, I bought 360 at launch but over the last 2-3 years MS have not made an effort with us the core market, why is everything all of the sudden about kinect? Wasn't xbox360 selling well when we are the core gamers supported it? Isnt it because of us xbox360 is successful to begin with so why did they turn on us. I think moving forward they will have a harder sell than Sony or Nintendo when it comes to core market.

You're a fool of fools. Nintendo is a bigger company than Sony with more money in the bank. 6.69 Billion more value then Sony on the stock market. Let me put it into perspective for you.

WiiU could fail and be dead in the water and Nintendo would still have enough money to have a profit loss for 63 years straight before they went out of biz.

So WiiU can fail, the next few handhelds could fail, and NiN still would have PLENTY of cash to start over again and again and again. It's over a 100+ year old company and It will still be here long after you're dead and forgotten:)

Interesting but untrue. The fact is that Nintendo is not the first home cartridge or disc console based gaming system ever. There were many who tried to crack the nut of home interactive entertainment BEFORE Nintendo. Mario set the stage for the success that Nintendo has garnered and Mario continues to be Nintendo's crutch. Now people will talk about innovation and dismiss Sony. Without Sony gaming would be in the dark ages still. Sony broke through with a trail of fire and gaming changed forever to be a hobby past teen years which was a demographic that the PC used to be the only platform where you could get the mature gaming experience. Nintendo knows the truth. If they did not pull out of the Sony disc add on deal then Sony would not have come into the gaming market. Sony added more value to their consoles from day one with the PS1 being a CD player and in some cases games could run in ram and you could put in a CD to play as your background soundtrack. Sony brought more to do on a console than play video games to the mass market and then gathered some of the best devs in the business and the rest is history. Sony innovated with motion control PS eye, remote play over the internet, dual analog sticks which is now standard, almost timeless controller layout that should be tweaked to be more like the Vita with real triggers for the L2 and R2 buttons. As far as gaming consoles go and moving on rather than standing put Sony is the best gaming company. They release new ips every generation despite past success. Nintendo would never do such a thing and dare I say never will because money means more to them. Underpowered consoles are a result of a lack of success in the last 2 generations and great marketing and Oprah made Wii a sensation. The Wii U would have been grossly underpowered if the Wii did not put up the numbers that it did. They can get to the 100 million mark now because gaming is so main stream and that is greatly thanks to the PS1 and PS2 which were the first home consoles to reach these heights of success. You have to be fair and reasonable when you deal with the Sony and Nintendo story because Nintendo screwed Nintendo having Sony as a competitor and not an ally.

If the Wii U fails (which it won't until we get details on the other 2 companies) it will be because Nintendo thought the fisher price nature of the tablet was enough. People are going to get angry and I am ready for the disagrees but Wii U did not go far enough. The controller should be the console and the box should just be to stream and upres the image from the tablet to the TV. Even if they went to an SD cartridge for games that are inserted in the tablet they would have probably hurt some 3DS sales but they could pre-empt some Gai-Kai and Microsoft cloud gaming next gen goodness. See Nintendo is not equipped to face what could come easily with Smart glass and Vita or a new controller from Sony. Plus their online will only be up to this gens current online offerings when Sony especially outright is prepared to make some serious strides in gaming convenience and accessibility with the Gai-Kai deal. Nintendo may be the first to market but I have a feeling that they are making some errors in light of likely possible innovation that exists and that Sony and Microsoft are going to enter in a big way.

You're bad at trolling in your articles and you're worse at trolling in comments. FFS, you attacked Katamari on the Vita because there were "too many" and praised Mario Kart 7 the same week...games that have about the same number of titles per platform and frankly tend to "innovate" the same amount (That is, barely). Your double standards are repulsive.

The 3DS had the same struggle before a price drop. The Ps3 suffered similar struggles before it started dropping in price. This isn't unmarked territory and you know it.

Your articles are an embarrassment and that's tough to do in a form of journalism with such low standards, Chris Buffa. Your writing takes modojo down a million notches.

What utter rubbish. Sony aren't trying to oust Nintendo, they are just trying to make themselves relevant in an ever changing market. I've been one of those people that have promoted the idea of the Vita/PS3 combo, but not because I think it can do it better. If anything, the combo gives developers the option to expand on the Wiiu idea, which makes support for the Wiiu more likely in the coming years.

Is there any angles left to demonize Sony with? I'd say all bases have now been covered.

You honestly don't think that each company (MS, Nintendo, Sony) are trying or hoping to become the dominate player and leader in the video game industry? And that each of these companies are trying to out the other?

Come on now.

Each company saw what Nintendo was doing with its motion controls and family friendly games and both tried to capitalize on it and take away from the Wii demographic.

Each company is trying to one up the other and become the leader in your living room. This means doing what the competition does but better. I know you are a Sony fan but to think that they can do no wrong or they're not in the business of crushing competition is very naive.

"Nintendo may suffer the same fate with the Wii U as Sony has already begun its assault on their system before it even has had a chance to launch, and before Sony has even considered developing a next-gen system."

Uh...PS4 has been in development for years now. In fact there are already games being made for it.

Sony can start by being profitable and work there way up from there. Good luck pushing out the company that owns Pokemon.

Nintendo could give away the WiiU and all their games for free to millions of people and still be better off than Sony. Understand, Nintendo lost money because of the economy and taking a sharp price cut to their handheld.

I've played with the Wii U, there's no way in hell Nintendo won't be putting up a fight. If you ask me, it's Sony that needs to work on their home console. Anyone can make a console with strong specs, but few can make games that have long-lasting impressions.

I think if you were to say this a few generation ago (When Sega was still around making consoles) then I'd agree. nintendo pretty much shafted Sony, so of course Sony wants to be dominate and have them begging for forgiveness.

Today I honestly don't think they care. They want to take the crowd away since its easy money, but overall they target two separate crowds.

Mmm if you read the details about the their potential deal Nintendo would have been the ones shafted. So I guess someone was going to be shafted, and Nintendo decided it wasn't going to be them (except then the next 2 gens didn't exactly go to plan).

Why don't they just merge? I mean Sony is absolutely the best at creating top notch hardware, and Nintendo is the best at creating amazing software to take advantage of said hardware. It would be a natural complement.

You can easily flip it around as well. Nintendo is great at creating hardware (they have a history of innovative control schemes) while Sony is better at software (they have a great lineup of 1st party games)

I'd rather they keep doing their things and staying seperate. Competition is good for consumers.

The President of Sony in the 90s literally vowed to "destroy" Nintendo. 15 years later and that never happened. The PS3 has lost billions and Sony hadn't seen a profitable quarter since 2008. Sony has lost more on the PS3 than they made on the PS2. The PSP failed to destroy the DS as everyone predicted, and the Vita is struggling to stay alive. Sony stocks actually dropped to a 35 year low the night before E3, a time when stocks usually rise based on the promise of a strong E3 showing. The "PlayStation curse" is so bad that even sony's partners in the media have been effected, as we have seen websites and magazines that backed Sony close their doors for good.

All of sony's attempts to copy Nintendo, like the PS Move controller, have been failures. (Note to Sony: consumers hate "me too" products.)

Sony doesn't have a finalized plan for the PS4, despite what you have heard. Sony is actually going to release PS3 content on iOS and Android. Both platforms compete directly with PS3. (In b4 "nuh uh!") This leads many to speculate that Sony is preparing an exit strategy, or a "no console" future.

But now that the doom and gloom is over I can say that I am aware of sony's long term plan to turn things around. Lets call it their "long game." It's a plan so brilliant that if it works Sony could find themselves ruling the game industry once again.

And if it doesn't work they'll be utterly destroyed. But hey, high stakes = high rewards.

I don't know where you get your facts, but PlayStation is actually one of Sonys strongest product lines. It has been profitable for them for a few years now, and the "billions is lost" was from when it was first launched. Which includes launching an entire new format (Blu-ray) among a new strong competitor (Microsoft) fighting them for every inch....Now that they are sticking to Blu-ray, they won't be losing money on the next console.

If PlayStation was such a "curse" why would they slap it on everything and use it to lead into new products? Blu-Ray, music services, video services, PlayStation Mobile, PlayStation certified phones, TV's, and all their other products? Would be rather stupid to take a failing product and use it to help sell other things.....

Sony isn't releasing content on IOS, and their phone market uses Android. So I'm sure their content will be cross compatible with PlayStation, thus creating a network of products (EVERY company is doing it, including MICROSOFT.)

The Vita doom and gloom comes with every product Sony launches. Yeah they have had failed products, but the cool thing about Sony is they support them till they completely die. Unlike other companies....should we bring up the Zune? Talk about failures....

"attempts to take on nintendo have failed" How? Every other company that tried to face them head on got destroyed, yet here is Sony taking chunks of the market away. There is a reason Microsoft has stayed away. Now Sony's moving into networked devices, more people are likely to turn to them for handheld gaming. If hardcore handheld gaming died, Nintendo would be screwed, while Sony has a phone market.

Sony does have an "exit" strategy for worst case scenario, and if you are an investor that should make you happy. If gaming were to die today, Microsoft and Sony would be fine.....Nintendo would have literally nothing. But it isn't dying, and thus all this networking is going to create a big dominance for Sony in the long run.

-"Management is feeling a serious sense of crisis about the seven years of losses," said Executive Deputy President Kaz Hirai

Other Notable Information:

-Sony bought out of the mobile joint venture with Ericsson for $1.47 billion dollars
-Sony sold off its shares in the LCD joint venture with Samsung for $939 million dollars
-Sony sold off its shares in the LCD joint venture with Sharp for $125 million dollars
-Sony announces a joint venture with Panasonic to develop next gen OLED TV displays
-Sony spun off its small to medium LCD business to join with Hitachi and Toshiba to form Japan Display Inc.
-Sony sold off its chemical business to the Japanese government for $730 million dollars.

I honestly hate posting all this information because now I've given all the hateful Sony bashers more ammunition. However, I can't stand it when people are uninformed, so I had to post all this data to prove I'm not just some Sony hater. I actually KNOW they have a good plan to turn things around. And if their gamble pays off it will be the biggest revolution in gaming history.

Oh, and just in case you want more information, I can provide direct links to Sony's own finacial reports, but you need to be able to read Japanese, or in my case, know someone who does.

Oh and as for the Vita, well it's the finest product ever made by Sony, and one of the best portables ever created by any company. But it's still struggling, and at this point I can only hope for the best.

You failed to prove me wrong at all. Sony stocks are down, and this is a PlayStation fault why? Sony already reported PlayStation being one of the most profitable areas of their company, along with their movie division. Their TV market is whats dragging them down....Sony just reported their movie company making the most money in a year EVER.

Look at your first link completely proving my point, it was written in 2009. Since your so good at doing research, please look up when the PS3 released....Now go read my comment about Blu-ray.

-Gaikai is coming to both, and sony JUST bought them. This has nothing to do with PlayStation. The service can go there and third party titles can go there. Doesn't mean the FULL service and FULL line up of games won't stay exclusive elsewhere.

I'm not arguing that Sony isn't struggling in areas, I'm stating its not PlayStation doing it. Its like saying microsoft is going bankrupt because their OS or Zune fails, they still have other areas to stand on. Above all else Sony is creating stable ground for themselves, by networking their devices and selling as a whole company. Something they sucked at until recently.